Left Behinds

The anti-andrewsullivan.com. Or, the Robin Hood (Maid Marian?) of bright pink Blogger blogs.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Fuckers

The M.T.A. also approved a $9.3 billion operating budget for 2006, over the objections of union leaders who had demanded that the vote be delayed until labor talks are completed.
...
The board agreed to divide $700 million - the portion of the surplus estimated to be nonrecurring - as follows: $450 million to reduce pension liabilities, $100 million for security projects, $50 million for service improvements and $100 million for holiday fare discounts this year and next. Link

At this point I have to assume the MTA is trying to force a strike so the union can be bankrupted and broken by fines. Why else would they poke a big fat stick in the union's eye on the eve of negotiations?

I hate them.

1 Comments:

At 10:19 PM, Solomon Grundy said…

I don't see your point.

I mean, I certainly can't think of a better way to spend $100 million than on pointless giveaways to tourists who would be coming to New York anyhow, with no benefits to people who live in New York. Besides, if the numbers don't add up, they can always exorbitantly increase the fares again! I think I can speak for the entire city in saying that we're totally willing to make that sacrifice for such a worthwhile reason.

I mean, they're the MTA. They've gotta have our best interests at heart.

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Conversations I, An Atheist Jew, Had With God About How Jesus Was Crazy and a Big Jerk You may have thought the Sermon on the Mount was the "cool" part of the Bible, but AO looks closely and discovers that it is, in fact, batshit crazy.

Frank Gehry to Brooklyn: Drop Dead SG reviews Gehry's design for the Atlantic Yards project, concluding that "It's like some giant grey Transformer clomped its foot down on Park Slope. And imagine when in a few years all those pristine white beams get coated in soot from the neverending traffic jams that are projected as a direct result of this development (have you ever tried to drive through Flatbush or Atlantic during rush hour or on a weekend?). It'll be a Transformer's giant grey dirty foot."

Androphilia is the New Gay Didn't we learn anything from the pointless "queer" debates of the early 90s? SG gets all bitchy discussing butchness and some blogger's anti-gay gay neologism.

Why It Matters To Be Rational Part I and Part II In two excellent posts drawing on research from his day job, AO argues that the US is allocating our collective resources irrationally because of badly misjudged relative risks. "Terrorism is for the most part extremely unlikely ... Global warming, on the other hand, is 100% likely (it is already underway), and if left unchecked its damage will almost certainly dwarf September 11." Yet "the same people who believe in ghosts and ESP believe terrorists are gonna bomb their mini-mall. People cannot distinguish between real threats and fantasy."

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The War on Empiricism In a prelude to the risk posts above, AO argues that more people believe in haunted houses than in the scientific method. Somewhere in this post there must be some Dick Cheney jokes.

Why I am a Liberal, or, Napkins are a Stupid Place to Make Government Policy AO and the Congressional Budget Office force small-government conservatives to "defend low taxation on its merits: either taxes and government are evil and immoral in themselves (the idea the right-wing noise machine has been trying to cram down our throats for 25 years or so), or in utilitarian terms less government and lower taxes benefits everyone more than high taxes and more government."

Anya Kamenetz Says ... My Choice Is Yogurt SG gets his semiotics on while ridiculing the latest crackpot scheme of his Most Annoying Person in New York designee.

Connecting the Dots: The Transit Strike and the Ratner Land Giveaway SG inventories MTA misdeeds and the public and media backlash against striking transit workers and finds himself in "a Bizarro alternate universe where no one can make the simplest connections between events."

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